Filed under: tv2 | Tags: cutaways, editing, finalcutpro, fine-cut, soundtrack
On Monday, we spent the whole day fine-cutting our documentary with precision, with the emphasised focus on our audio mix and overlays. We also re-configured the ending so it was less jarring. We also learnt some great editing tips along the way, which made it all in all a lot less time consuming. Firstly, lets talk about cutaways.
Cutaways
Cutaways need to be put in the right place so they do not jarringly pop out of nowhere. Therefore, you need to correlate them quite significantly with the running dialogue. When I went into the editing suites on Monday I had a feeling that we had just chucked in our cutaways without considering how they flow into Maggie’s words. Therefore, we spent some time alloting carefully where to have each cutaway cut in and cut out. Let me give you a tangible example:
In the cigarettes and milkbar story we have 5 different overlays throughout: two of milkbars, one of her arm in a sling and one of a packet of cigarettes. The milkbar cutaways come in when she talks about the actual process of robbing the milkbar, yet they came in right on the middle of one of her words, which made it seem very jarring and then there was a gap (a pause in her speaking) which was cut halfway through with a second milkbar cut. On the whole it was quite jarring. Therefore, what needed to be done was a slight shifting of the clips so that they sat at the end or beginning of a word to make it a much neater transition into the cutaway. With the packets of cigarettes the shot was too short and just looked like a flashing image. Therefore, we just extended it and it worked much better.
In using cutaways you have to make sure they’re not redundant. Gina and I spent about half an hour putting a cutaway in to cover a messy cut by using an emotional blank shot of Maggie’s face. Because we were messing around with this for so long we thought that perhaps it didn’t work and took it away realising it was not the cut itself that was clunky but the audio cut straight into the word, which brings me to my next amazing editing discovery.
Audio tip, especially helpful when someone links all their words together
Maggie talks throughout her interview in two distinct ways; either very slow with lots of space or very quick linking her words together. Whilst the slow works well and is easy to cut around the quick is very difficult as we can’t get any space before words as they are linked intrinsically to the previous.
Solution # 1 attempt to cut right at the beginning of the word (This doesn’t work very well and is what we used for our rougher cuts, because she comes in very quickly and half the word is usually cut off).
Solution # 2 put a gap in your audio to give it some space. This works quite well except does leave a gapping hole of obvious silence, and because Maggie does breathe quite heavily between words the gaps are even more obvious.
Solution # 3 add a gap fade in fade out. This was seriously the ultimate solution and eliminated the clunkiness of Maggie starting a word. We would extend the clip slightly and then fade into the beginning of the word we needed. Sometimes we did need that gap just to make the process of her telling the story less rushed and more poignant. So we would fade into and out of the silence, which made it a hell of a lot less noticable.
In working through these problems Gina and I realised that you really just have to persist to you get it perfect, we had the time to make each cut perfect so we had to ensure we did this, even though it was time consuming. What we realised was her part 1 Rodney story was very rushed and just seemed unimportant, when it is something that is really important to Maggie, and therefore by putting in gaps and making it longer it made it a lot more significant connecting more truthfully to Maggie’s story.
On a final note it is important to edit to the music, especially if it is particularly rythmic. In our beginning montage Sarah and Meenal edited each cut to the changes in the music, which made the edit ever so more impressive and because we used the same song in the credits it was important to do the same, where each change in credit links causatively to the change in music.
Overall, I think my editing has become a l0t better in terms of mastering short cuts and really thinking about every cut. I remember Paul saying in one of the lectures that your group should ‘high five’ for every great cut and as we edited on Monday I really understood the merit of what he was saying, because in documentary every cut is signifying something and you need to make sure that it is signifying the right thing and if it’s not ever-so-slightly you need to change it. I felt like I was being a meticulous snob, but atleast we’re all happy with the final product.
LECTURE NOTES AND TIPS:
Track laying from (top to bottom)
Lay-up your sound at first assembly
Ways to compose/score for a fine cut
all audio has to be peaking between -12 and -6
effects- gain to boost the volume drag it onto the track to boost it
Don’t stress out too much just make sure it’s all peaking at the same point
Go to the audio mixing tab to control the volume (control on the fly as you are mixing it, much easier to adjust your music score)
Blood Simple (Coen Brother’s first film):
CHECK the how to movies
put markers in to know when to cut, to make it smoother to split clip at playhead
DON’T use the unlinking key as it will unlink all your vision and audio. Select the clip + modify + apple+L
Overlay and then cut, using markers to get your timing right
Look and analyse who’s listening and who’s talking, and the importance of their reaction, who is important in this scene, whose emotion to we want.
Change the atmos to build up tension. Building up of ticking. Computer buzzing.
Bring in other sounds to make the tension build.
Finish your project:
You cannot use iDVD or Toast
Use good compression
Export using compressor
Double check that you hand in the right version
Do Media Manging, using Media Manager
Use colour correction going through in tute. Watch the how to movie.
Screening:
Friday night of week 14.
LECTURE OVERVIEW:
Today’s lecture was on Final Cut Pro and I guess the basics on how to use it and more importantly how to organise your project. I took lots of notes because I found what Paul was saying to be really helpful in terms of organising your project in a coherent way. A ramble of my notes are at the bottom of this blog post, but I thought that I would go into more depth about them while its all fresh in my head. He firstly suggested to do a schedule of works, which is a table organised into two columns of Date & whom alongside to do/done this makes editing easy in terms of delegating tasks and seeing exactly where we are up to in the editing process without having to speculate when another person gets on to edit. They will be able to see clearly what has been done and what needs to be done, go to FinalCut and be able to start working straight away without any confusion.
In terms of organisation Paul suggested to create folders, within folders, within folders. Keep everything organised and in tabs along the top- one with your content and one with you sequences. Have a folder for each scene and organise your scenes via sequences, don’t just drop all your film together have seperate sequences for each scene and then put them together when you are getting ready for your rough cut. For your fine cut copy and paste each scene sequence so you can finely edit it together in terms of the transitions between each scene.
In terms of actually editing, keep snap lock on because it just makes editing easier you wont accidentally delete the end part of the previous clip. Put an in and out point for each clip before you drag it into the sequence. Edit that shot roughly before dragging it into the sequence, you can also use apple F10 to do this, where it will copy your clip into the sequence. When cutting during action make the next shot 2 frames ahead of time. This is something I really didn’t know. You do this because it takes our eyes a while to adjust and it will look slightly jarring if you don’t do this. Paul also suggested to avoid cutting on action as it means that you have to keep the next shots in real time and therefore can’t excel quickly to a later time.
I learnt a lot in this lecture and think that I will be much more comfortable working with the program from now on. I always have this theory that the better you know the software the less it can contrain you. The more you know it the better you can achieve exactly what you wanted to.
NOTES FROM THE LECTURE:
Schedule of works. Date & whom and to do/ or done. Checklist.
Calender
Finder
- Your Hard drive
- Scratch disk
- Folder-Text files, DVD work, Music, FCP project- saving & backing up, memory stick, auto save vault
Everytime you open your project:
Shift Q, Ctrl Q
Oragnise everything in folders, within folders, within folders
Create sequences for each scene
Apple F10: will drop you clip from your viewer to the sequence, leaves the playhead at the out point of that shot
Targets: where your audio and vision sits in the sequence using the v1, v2 and a1 and a2
Have snapping on always (easier to edit)- keyboard shortcut is ‘n’
Have a run-up to the cut
JUMP forward by two frames, 2 20/5ths of a second forward it is better for your eyes
If you cut on action you are stuck in real time, however wherever possible try not to do this. The cut will not be jarring, once you put in your sound.
Cut in scenes, not in one full sequence, otherwise it is very difficult. When you drag scenes together from their seperate sequences it nests them together however when you double click it goes back to the actually sequence where it is not nested.
Set up different versions of different scenes so you have a lot of things to choose from. Keep everything in seperate bins.
Duplicate scenes when you are not brave enough to delete that treasured clip, always keep a back-up of the sequence if the new version doesn’t work.
Lenny Exercise from Hannah Brasier on Vimeo.
Something very strange is going on and cannot embed the video properly, however when I get home I will upload the video via raws and that should work. I learnt a lot about Final Cut Pro, especially concerning the shortcuts. I have used Premiere Pro before, which is really similar so I didn’t have much difficulty with the task. I tried to use a lot of cuts to get used to cutting up clips and putting them together continuously and succinctly. I really like Final Cut Pro because it works logically and is relatively simple to use.
